Friday, December 20, 2013

Confessions of a Hater by Caprice Crane

Confessions of a Hater by Caprice Crane

Publication date: August 27, 2013 (Feiwel & Friends)

Average teenager Hailey Harper has spent her entire life living in the shadow of golden girl and older sister, Noel. She isn’t popular at school but she isn’t hated. But when her parents announce they are moving to California and Hailey stumbles upon her sister’s diary called “How to be a Hater” as she’s packing, Hailey decides she is going to use this move as her opportunity to reinvent herself and become popular. Not long after she manages into the popular clique at her new school, Hailey finds herself hating everything about being popular and she is quickly butting heads with the most popular girl at school, Skylar. Hailey finds solace in the most hated girl at school, Anya, and her group of friends. Dubbing themselves The Invisibles, these girls quickly spark a war with Skylar and her clique.

What I found to be a refreshing change of pace is that instead of being the typical “girl moves across the country and is just instantly popular without changing/reinventing herself on her own,” Caprice Crane instead had Hailey reinvent herself to be exactly like her sister through the use of her sister’s diary. I haven’t read a book that has done that. The ending was also a pleasant surprise what with Hailey putting her artistic skills to use to resolve the conflict of the book.

Crane also shows she is quite capable of handling the tiny nuances of writing very well such as when Andy and Anya are introduced, the reader can instantly tell these two have a history because of their reactions to and behavior around one another. She also slips in the subplot with Kura that expertly emphasizes the fact that someone can be so caught up in their bullshit that they don’t realize their friends or family are struggling with something much bigger than what they’re dealing with.

My biggest issue with the book was the fact that as soon as Hailey ignited the war with the popular girls, I instantly knew where Hailey was going to end up character-wise: she was going to become what she hated. Along with the most popular guy at school falling for her, the flaw of this book is predictability.

With that being said, Confessions of a Hater is a book that I would recommend as something to read in between finding something that you absolutely love.